by Zahi Hawass
The ancient Egyptians developed remarkably sophisticated medical treatments for disease using both surgery and natural remedies. They understood chemistry and the effects of mixing several substances together. Some of these formulas have been passed down to us through surviving papyri. The Egyptians also devised a highly effective method to preserve their dead. Mummification is a combination between magic and medicine and we know only a small portion of the vast information available about its methods, tools and materials. As for the ancient rituals and spells, we have much to learn.

The mummies that were produced in the Graeco-Roman Period do not reflect the same meticulous care taken by the ancient Egyptians. Specialists working in groups took charge of the operations; priests no longer conducted the entire operation.

Preservation techniques were greatly simplified during this period, outer casing became extremely ornate and the linen wrappings became more sophisticated. Wrappings were crisscrossed in intricate patterns and sometime decorated with gold. Cartonnage cases and masks were moulded over the body and lavishly painted. Facial features were represented realistically; the ears and head were covered wigs that reached to the shoulders and chest. For the first time in Egypt, we see women's breasts painted on the outside of the mummies or articulated in breast plates.

Featured on the masks were religious scenes, patterned lines, and gods such as Anubis, Horus, Isis, Osiris, Nepthys, Maat, Thoth and the four sons of Horus. A fascinating mix of Egyptian mythological beings painted in Hellenistic style.

Graeco-Roman mummies saw resurgence in the use of much gold and gilding. I estimate that during the Graeco-Roman Period, one mummy would have cost the equivalent to a family's income for one year.

Mummies and mummification of Bahariya, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, December 05, 2005.

There are over 5,000 institutions of higher education in the United States. But just one — Brown — boasts a free-standing Egyptology department. Almost 60 years after its founding, Brown's Department of Egyptology remains the only one of its kind in the entire Western Hemisphere.

Like the invention of the microwave and artificial sweetener, the creation of the department was somewhat serendipitous.

When Theodora Wilbour died in 1947, she left the University $750,000 to establish the department and endow a chair in Egyptology in memory of her father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, who entered Brown with the Class of 1854 but left without graduating and did not maintain any connection with the University, according to the Encyclopedia Brunoniana.

Wilbour made his fortune as a journalist in New York and had connections to William Macy Tweed, the boss of the Tammany Hall political machine. When the Tweed ring was smashed in 1871 Wilbour and his family sailed for France, where he began studying Egyptology. Wilbour went on to become the first trained American Egyptologist...

Nation's only Egyptology dept. set to expand, but details not set in stone, The Brown Daily Herald, Brown University, Rhode Island, USA, November 09, 2005.

On a cloudless morning in northern Sudan, the first rays of the sun cast a glow on Jebel Barkal, a small tabletop mountain perched near the Nile River. Jebel Barkal rises barely 320 feet above the surrounding desert but is distinguished by one prominent feature: a pinnacle jutting out from its southwestern cliff face. If your imagination is keen enough, the isolated butte might resemble a crown or an altar, and the pinnacle an unfinished colossal statue-perhaps a rearing serpent, its body poised to strike.

Striding toward an excavation near the base of the pinnacle, archaeologist Tim Kendall pauses momentarily to admire what he calls the "little mountain with big secrets." Thousands of years ago, Jebel Barkal and Napata, the town that grew up around it, served as the spiritual centre of ancient Nubia, one of Africa's earliest civilizations. The mountain was also considered a holy site by neighbouring Egypt, whose pharaohs plundered and tyrannized Nubia for 400 years.

But in the eighth century B.C., Nubia turned the tables on its former colonizers. Its armies marched 700 miles north from Jebel Barkal to Thebes, the spiritual capital of Egypt. There the Nubian king Piye became the first of a succession of five "black pharaohs" who ruled Egypt for six decades with the blessing of the Egyptian priesthood. What happened? asks Kendall. How did the Nubians, overrun by Egypt for centuries, crush their colonizers? And why did the priests of Thebes decide the black pharaohs had a mandate from heaven? Kendall has been searching for those answers for 20 years. They can be revealed, he believes, by cracking a code of geomorphological symbols at Jebel Barkal and by parsing hieroglyphic texts that refer to the mountain as Dju-wa'ab, or "Pure Mountain." "I feel as if I'm deciphering a mythological puzzle," Kendall says. "It's a real mystery story..."

Nubia's Black Pharaohs, Discover Magazine, USA, Vol. 26, No. 12, December 2005. Requires subscription.